Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy User Manual
Page 42
Trigger Happy
44
But it was not all plain sailing. When Pong first
came out, Atari was immediately sued. Ralph Baer’s
home-tennis game had finally been taken up by
Magnavox. The first home console, the Magnavox
Odyssey, had been released six months before Atari’s
debut. And it was to all intents and purposes a home
Pong avant la lettre. It lacked the hypnotic sonar-blip
soundtrack of the arcade game, but there was no doubt
that it had got there first, and Atari was forced to pay
Magnavox a license fee on every game sold.
Of course, all these Pong-style games were direct
descendants of the lost oscilloscope program by Willy
Higinbotham, who never made a penny. Rip-offs of
home tennis and multi-player arcade versions of
“tennis” or “hockey,” as well as the first simplistic
shooting and driving games, flourished over the next
few years. But, as if punished by the Fates for not
honoring its ancestor, the booming videogame industry
was soon brought to its knees—and the reason was the
very multiplicity of Pongs. By 1977, there were so
many rival home machines that stores began dumping
them at knockdown prices, and many manufacturers
went bust. It looked as if videogames had been a mere
fad, a fad which had now burnt itself out. The industry
was on the verge of total meltdown.